We all “know” that Franklin Roosevelt rode into Washington in 1933 and replaced the do-nothing Hoover administration with a host of government programs that helped rescue the United States from the Great Depression.
The latest Newsweek recounts the story:
Between 1929 and 1933, as a stock-market crash and credit crunch metastasized into a Depression, Herbert Hoover adopted a hands-off approach that exiled his party from the White House for a generation.
I put the quotation marks around “know” because the scenario described above is completely false. Hoover, whose nickname was ?The Great Engineer,? was a big fan of government intervention. (It?s a major reason predecessor Calvin Coolidge distrusted him.) Hoover used the federal government in disastrous ways to prolong the Depression.
FDR, who had initially campaigned in opposition to some of Hoover?s meddling, changed his tune only after entering the White House and deciding he sort of liked being the person making all the rules.
People interested in the true story should consult Amity Shlaes? recent book about the topic, titled The Forgotten Man.
